Why does my heart pound and I heat up if I over eat?

Yesterday I went on a 9 mile hike and climb so my appetite for dinner was ravenous! Some co-workers took me out to eat for a celebration at one of those Brazilian steakhouses because they know how I eat. Those are the restaurants that just bring around endless amounts of different types of meat! So I bypassed the salad bar and just went straight for the meat. I would venture to say I ate close to 1.5-2lbs of meat as I kept at it for a solid hour!! I also had 2 glasses of wine. However, when I got home I was so ridiculously full and my heart was just pounding. I also had a tough time sleeping because my body temp was so high. I have to admit I didn't feel so great this morning. Still full (lol) and had a sour stomach.

Any particular reason I had those symptoms from over eating just meat?

I skip the salad bar every time I go to one of those restaurants. They're just trying to stuff you with filler so you'll eat less meat. This is why they also being plenty of 'free' sides. At my favorite churrascaria, they bring as many mashed potatoes, rolls, and polenta as you'll eat. They're not free, they're margin-protectors.

5
Answers

When you overeat you stimulate two competing systems in the central nervous system. The parasympathetic and the sympathetic. The sensation of heart pounding is due to the increased demand placed upon the heart to deliver more blood flow to your gut to deliver the nutrients to the brain. The signal the brain received initially was parasympathetic as soon as the food was smelled or touched your lips and vagus nerve. The vagus nerve is the tenth cranial nerve and it carries parasympathetic fibers from the organs in your mouth and entire GI tract to your transverse mesocolon. This is the basis of the brain gut axis. It's how the brain senses what is occurring in the gut and how it should respond.....so when you eat a lot.....you need more blood flow in your gut. So heart gets more sympathetic flow to increase it's heart rate and less parasympathetic input to slow it. Disease states screw that normal response up.

The heart poundage almost certainly came from the salt in the meat increasing your blood pressure. Increased blood pressure means more force must be generated in the left ventricle to expel blood into the aorta, thus a "pounding".